The present invention relates generally to devices for holding cards and more particularly pertains to a card holder suitable for the protection and presentation of sports cards, photographs and the like.
The collection, buying, selling and trading of sports cards has created a need for a means to easily and inexpensively display, protect and store such cards. To suit this demand, numerous card holders have been designed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,224,600 to Neugebauer describes a card holder in which a transparent cover frictionally engages a transparent base to hold the card. Other card holders have been designed in which the base and cover are joined together by means of a plurality of screws. Usually these holders, known as screw down holders, consist of a top plate and a bottom plate which are held together by four screws, one in each corner of the holder.
Because these four screw card holders do have four screws, they are tedious to open and close. Before the card holder can be opened, each screw must be removed. Once opened, the user must keep track of four screws. To insure proper closure of these card holders, each screw must be reinserted in the holder. Thus, opening and closing this style of card holders is tedious and time consuming.
The designs of known screw down card holders also have the disadvantage of being too large to file with unprotected cards in standard set monster boxes. Monster boxes are enlarged standard storage boxes which hold 3,200-5,000 cards. Instead of the long side of the card being laid on the bottom of the box as in standard set storage boxes, the shorter side of the card is on the bottom of the box so that the cards stand upright. Unfortunately, these monster boxes are not able to accommodate the standard four screw card holder model because of the size of the holder. As one can imagine, to accommodate four separate screws, the card holder will at least be longer than the size of the card by the diameter of the head of the screws which are used to secure the holder. The advantage of storing cards in a storage box is that the box prevents light rays from damaging the cards. As one would expect, faded cards are worth substantially less than those in mint condition. Thus, a need has developed for a screw down card holder having dimensions smaller than those of conventional screw down card holders.